I'll Never Say I'm Sorry
by kajamiku
Summary: After a mission Neji contemplates his sins and can't help but add to them. NejiSasu OneShot.


**Title: **I'll Never Say I'm Sorry  
**Author: **kajamiku  
**Pairing: **NejiSasu (and I wondered where the angst came from XD)  
**Rating: **R  
**Disclaimer: **I don't own these characters or the anime they came from; I was just asked to play with them for a while  
**Summary/Notes: **This fic didn't come out the way it was intended. Initially it was supposed to be a harmless love/lust romp by a river inspired by prompts from one of my friends... and then came angst and the fic kind of ran away with me from there. I'm satisfied though, so please enjoy.

Summary #1: He can't have him, but he does anyway. #2: After a mission Neji contemplates his sins and can't help but add to them.

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**I'll Never Say I'm Sorry**

You looked up at me, just for a second, as if you could hear where my thoughts have been lingering for the past hour. But you looked away slowly enough, not quickly (adverse) and not too musingly. I'm glad of that. I don't want you to think about this, I don't want you to stay up night after night, staring at a candle until it burns down, only to light another. I don't want that for you. I carry enough sin for the both of us.

_I can't have you._

No matter how many times I say it… it's still no good. The situation I'm in won't end with these words. It can't. I'm too deep, the pressure has made me deaf to them. It seems I can't do anything but ignore them, even at the cost of myself.

I do despise this weakness, this complete inability to stop myself from doing things I shouldn't. Things I wouldn't do without-

You return to washing your clothes in the river, steady, even movements, concentration evident even in such a simple task. Then again, perhaps that furrowed brow is not for your recently bloodied jacket – still not quite dry; is that why you're so quick to cleanse it? – perhaps something else weighs on your mind.

Are you thinking about the mission we just carried out? About the targets we killed? I don't think you are. (Your blade moved too carelessly, I don't think you're the type to remember unless you see their faces.) I believe you're thinking of home, of Konoha who accepted your return and now keeps a careful eye on your back, who handles you with wary hands that are always ready to draw away and strike back. We both know you were an enemy for too long. That it's difficult to forgive. You've changed sides again, but you're still the same person.

I think I've changed. Slowly, and of course it was not I who noticed it first. A 'softness to my eyes', Hinata said. Lee said… No need to repeat what Lee said. Continually, until my ears bled and TenTen begged for mercy.

To me it was simply that the blank coldness in my chest had grown a little warmer. Everything wasn't as rough to the touch as it had been. What caused it, I'm not sure. What it means, I have no idea, but I _have_ changed and that in itself feels like more of an accomplishment than I thought it would.

I sit here on the river bank, under the trees and away from the clearing that lies on our side (the trees are denser on the opposite side, the side that we will be travelling through tomorrow to reach the Village and give our report), which currently sports unwelcome sun and unnecessary heat that I am quite happy to avoid until dusk in a couple of hours, and all I can do is watch your attempts to get the blood from your clothes. I'm not sure why you're so bothered about such a thing when it can be done much more easily once we've returned to Konoha. You don't like that jacket. You tug at it uncomfortably at odd moments, tearing the loose threads from the cuff as if they offend you.

You wouldn't speak anyway, so I know it isn't to cover the silence, which is hovering over us like a cloud nonetheless. Are you restless? I've noticed your agitated moments on previous missions, rare as they are. You cover them in company by shifting your weight – left leg to the right, then the left again – and by intensifying your usual stoicism and glares. It could be that, and I would leave it at that, but your expression is too far away for something so mundane.

I could ask, but I can't imagine you would say anything; you'd merely fix me with a 'why are you even asking?' look and then return to your cleaning. But I don't know Sasuke, if I asked you what was wrong, would you tell me?

You aren't thinking of Konoha. I know now. I know, because you just deliberately brushed your fingers against the tear in the sleeve of your jacket. The tear you haven't sewn up since it was made, weeks or months ago. I don't know how you got it – and I know you wouldn't tell me – but that doesn't stop me from wondering about it.

That tear is something I don't know about, you gave me a warning glance the one time I nearly asked about it. But I probably know more about you than you think, even mostly gleaned from others (eavesdropping and selective questioning) as the information is. Then again, even with all this knowledge about your Clan and your history, it's all second-hand and it doesn't entirely explain the path that follows it.

And now you're a lost child, much as I am, in that your long-held beliefs have been shattered and proved false. We're believers in a broken idol, a fake god. What have we to believe now? What do we devote our souls to now? No Fate. No Revenge. We're left alone in the wilderness, puddles where a lake used to be.

The jacket is clean now – the water passing where I'm sitting is no longer tinged pink – but you continue to scrub at it, rinsing it through an extra time before you deem it good enough to hang up. Is it that you don't want to walk through our home Village in the colours of a murderer? Does it perhaps make you feel better to return 'clean'? Is that guilt? I'm not sure. I can never tell whether you feel guilt for the things you've done. If you do, you hide it well.

I didn't realise how dark it'd become. The sun has almost set already and the water is flashing orange into my eyes as I watch the leaves travel downstream. My gaze soon returns to you. The sun dapples the area you've chosen to recline in, you look less pale, warmer even though I can see goosepimples on your arms from where I am. Probably from the cold water you've been using for the past two hours.

That jacket must have been quite stubborn.

The fading light looks good on you. The quiet stillness of the area makes for quite a nice place to camp for the night, but even now I hold no delusions of my intentions and I know I chose this place on purpose. I know what will happen now that there is nothing to stop it.

You look comfortable, left leg out straight, the right crooked, your arms loosely folded. The cut lip you received earlier makes your lips look, if possible, poutier and when you close your eyes…

I can't help myself.

At this rate I think I'll be repenting for my sins for the rest of my life. I'll never once regret it. I'll always remember. But I'll always know my sins and how they accumulate more than they should; I am guilty of more than being a shinobi.

I feel like there are hands resting at my throat, waiting to tighten the noose, to destroy this sinner who is ruining a life he holds dear out of lust and frustration. Are these things that should break me? Surely not. Surely this isn't me, pinning this man with my body, legs caught around those beneath me? Surely those aren't my hands tearing the cloth from those pale shoulders?

Your eyes are accusing me; dark and heavy and mostly unreadable. You don't resist; your hands remove your belt and pull your shirt over your head. Your fingers dig into my hair and your breathing increases its pace, chest rising and falling beneath me. I feel you remove my forehead protector and I hear it chink against rock as you throw it aside. It's a vague thought that surfaces for an instant, but I wonder if it landed in the river and how long it will take me to find it this time.

Is that resentment? Or habit?

I feel like a tiger pouncing. Silence, beauty and poise reduced to a state where all I am is teeth and claws and unforgiving eyes.

Then I can't look at you. I can't see the evidence of my repeated mistakes, standing stark against the pale skin; marks from a mouth, from teeth and fingers that gave too much pressure. Evidence of my sins. Of my weakness.

I close my eyes.

I was surprised before, surprised that you succumbed, that you didn't simply run me through with a kunai. I did pin you to a tree after all, and we are adult shinobi in a world recovering from recent war and fresh betrayals. Did you expect it? Was I obvious? Did I watch you too closely? I wonder these things, but they don't really matter. I don't really care.

We move together, used to each other by now, mouths meeting mouths meeting flesh, and I feel strong hands clawing at my back, teeth and hot breath at my ear. You tug off my shirt and I relent while you remove it, returning to your chest and belly the instant the clothing is gone, my hand slipping into your open trousers.

I let myself and my lust have full reign, not bothering to pause to say anything, not feeling I need to. You understand what you're doing, I think.

I wonder if you feel guilty. You're married now after all. You've promised yourself to someone else and should belong solely to them. How many times have you broken that promise? How many times have you betrayed her now? Just because I can't stop, doesn't mean you can't stop me. Despite my position, I will not side with you on this; she deserves better treatment than she receives from you. I don't even want to imagine her pain; the pain of a girl who loves you. I don't want to imagine and I don't want her to know. But not because she's your wife.

You make a small sound in the back of your throat, one hand's fingers fisting the grass, the other still laced into my hair. I'm rough with you, I know, I can't not be, because this is the only way I can do this. I had hoped to frighten you with this intensity, this near-mauling of your body, but you only urge me faster, gasping commands and entreaties, head thrown back as if I wasn't abusing you while you did it.

I often wonder if she doesn't know. Surely no one who sees beneath your layers of clothing could possibly think that these marks were from anything but this. Do you make excuses for it? Or do you leave her to reassure herself?

It was during the war that I first noticed her. The mere prospect of a war – even one as sudden and brief and violent as that one – has the ability to force people together. It brings forth new relationships and alliances and friendships as if each person fears it's the last time for it.

I was injured badly in the war. I remember being in a hot, foul-smelling tent near the end – fitful and in near constant states of nightmares and pain – and I woke lucidly at one point, seeing her above me. I remember recognising her. I remember saying her name to ask for water and then choking on a laugh that sounded like death because of the weakness of my own voice, her smile of relief fading when my eyesight blurred and warm liquid rolled down my chin. I remember her leaning forward, pressure and heat on my chest, and her voice telling me something in a war-worn tone that still echoed hope.

I like to think that it is because she is your wife that I feel such guilt for my repeated sins, but had I never seen her face, never had her save my life when I could so easily have died and done nothing to save myself, I probably wouldn't even think of it.

If she wanted revenge for all this I wouldn't argue. I would allow her any vengeance she wanted. The problem is, there is nothing she could do that would make me regret it. I wish that there was, that there was some punishment she could exact that would make me scream that I hated you, that I would never do it again, that it meant nothing. But there is nothing she could do, nothing at all.

I will ask for her forgiveness, but I will never say I'm sorry.


End file.
